The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals (review)

The 2000 census marked the first time in its history that the Census Bureau allowed respondents the option of choosing more than one racial category. Strictly speaking, individuals have long been able to choose more than one racial category — their responses, however, were not counted as such. So the center of current concerns over the new race question, and what this volume is most concerned to address, are the implications of both counting and using multiple race counts in policy areas where race counts matter. How can 2000 race data be compared with that collected in previous censuses? Are multiple-race respondents treated as separate groups for the purposes of civil rights enforcement? What impact will this change have on political alignments? Will it undermine the legitimacy of the state's collection of racial data?

Joel Perlmann and Mary Waters have put together an important, timely, and readable volume that examines these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (most are sociologists, political scientists, or demographers).

Of most immediate importance to readers will be the various articles that detail the technical aspects of how the census counts multiracial individuals. The possible permutations of the race data are daunting: 63 racial categories (126 when reported by Hispanic/non-Hispanic ethnicity). An appendix detailing the results of various techniques for bridging old and new race data is essential for understanding how racial statistics are arrived at (Tucker, et. al.). Other articles make clear the interpretive problems hidden within such data. David Harris provides empirical support for something qualitative analyses of multiracial populations have long contended, namely that how people identify themselves racially varies with the form of the question asked, the context in which it is asked, and who is doing the asking.

While the book is subtitled "how the census counts multiracial individuals," it is broader than this wording implies. Discussions of the census question, bridging techniques, and the effects on population counts constitute only one- third of the book. Another third is dedicated to the politics of counting multiracial individuals and another third to more speculative matters such as its likely effect on racialized political alignments.

It should be no surprise that this is the most varied and contentious part of the book. The authors all seem to believe in the necessity of counting by race (with the possible exception of Werner Sollors), but they disagree on the wisdom of counting multiple race responses. Rod Harrison is the most pessimistic about this policy, arguing that the racial counts upon which civil rights enforcement depends are now determined by allocation procedures — procedures that are vulnerable to legal challenge. Josh Goldstein and Ann Morning are more accepting of this change and provide a helpful overview of Office of Management and the Budget (OMB) tabulation guidelines and their likely (and variable) impact on civil- versus voting-rights cases.

Taken as a whole, the book begins at the moment when changes to OMB Directive 15 (issued in 1997) are first implemented in 2000 and proceeds into the future. What we don't learn about is how this change came about in the first place. Perlmann and Waters choose to "leave to others" an examination of the political machinations that led to the race-question change. They raise the possibility that multiracial advocates and Republicans in Congress shared an interest in diluting the strength of black interest groups (albeit for different reasons) as an explanation for why multiracial actors were successful in getting their agenda acted upon. This is a provocative speculation and deserves more sustained attention. Luckily for those interested, an analysis of the major players in the classification debates and their agenda based on interviews and fieldwork has been done (see Kim M. Williams, "The Next Step in Civil Rights: The American Multiracial Movement," paper presented at the Colorlines Conference, Harvard University, August 31...